Creating and Managing Departments

 

Departments help categorize and route requests. Even if all your requests are processed by one person it may be useful to keep track of what types of requests you are receiving. Departments will be visible in a list that the requester can select from when submitting their request, unless you choose to not give them this ability (Portal Settings>New Request Form>Basic Configurations) or make the department Private. If you assign a Point of Contact to every department, requests will be automatically routed to that person, which can help distribute the workload of responding to requests across your organization.

This help document covers how to create and manage departments. Click on a link in the list to jump to that section:

• How to create a department
• How to add users to a department
• How to set the department Point of Contact
• How to remove users from a department
• How to update department settings
• How to archive a department

For information about how to manually assign a request to a department after it has been submitted click here.

How to create a department

There are two parts to creating a new department. Creating the department itself and adding users to it. These steps cover how to create the department. Information about how to add users to a department is in the next section here.

Steps for creating a department

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the CREATE DEPARTMENT button
5. Enter the department name and description (optional) 
6. Select the default visibility for the department. This will automatically set who can see requests assigned to a department. This can be overridden for individual requests. For more information about the different visibility settings and how the default visibility for departments works click here.
7. (Optional) Set the department to Private: Private departments do not show up on the list that requesters see when they select a department for their request and any actions taken by private departments on a request are not seen by the requester. Private departments are visible to and selectable by internal users
8. (Optional) Set the Point of Contact for the department. The department Point of Contact overrides the organization Point of Contact for requests assigned to that department. For more information about how the Point of Contact works click here.
9. Click Save

If you would like to add users to the department, go directly to step 5 in the next section How to Add Users to a Department

 

How to add users to a department

You can add users to a department from either the Department or the User page. For steps for adding a user to a department from the User page click here.

Steps for adding users to a department

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the Edit icon () next to the department you want to add users to
5. Click the ADD STAFF button
6. Click the box "Type a staff name or email" and enter the user you want to add and/or select the user from the drop-down list
7. (Optional) Check the box "Assign as Support Staff to all requests assigned to this department: these staff will automatically be assigned as Support Staff to all requests that are assigned to this department. Department members who are not auto-assigned to requests will still be able to view all requests assigned to the department but will not receive notifications about the request.
8. Click the SAVE button

 

How to set the department Point of Contact

All requests assigned to a department will automatically be assigned to that department's Point of Contact, overriding the organization-wide Point of Contact. When a request is assigned to multiple departments, you will have the option of selecting which of the departments default Point of Contact is the Point of Contact for the request. For more information about the different ways requests can be automatically assigned based on Department and other factors click here.

The Point of Contact can be set when the department is created but this is not required. The steps below are for setting the Point of Contact for a department that has already been created. For information about how to set the Point of Contact as part of creating a department click here.

 

Steps for setting a department Point of Contact

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the Edit icon () next to the department you’d like to set the Point of Contact for
5. Select a user from the Point of Contact drop-down menu (right above the SAVE button)
6. Click the SAVE button

How to remove users from a department

You can remove a user from a department from either the Department or User page. If you want to remove multiple users from the same department at once we recommend the steps below. If you want to remove one use from multiple departments we recommend doing so directly from that user's edit page. For steps for how to do that click here.

Steps for removing users from a department

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the Edit icon () next to the department you want to edit
5. Click the REMOVE button next to the user you want to remove
6. Click OK

 

 

How to update department settings

This section covers how to update department-wide information. For information about how to add users to a department click here. For steps for updating the department Point of Contact click here.

Steps for updating an existing department

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the Edit icon () next to the department you want to edit
5. Once in the department you can update any of the following:
   • Department name and description
   • Default Request Visibility: This automatically sets who can see requests assigned to a department. This can be overridden for individual requests.
     • Note: Updating the default visibility for a department will not update the visibility for all requests already assigned to that department. For more information about the different visibility settings and how the default visibility for departments works click here.
   • Department Visibility: You can choose to make the department Public (default) or Private. Private departments do not show up on the list that requesters see when they select a department for their request and any actions taken by private departments on a request are not seen by the requester.
6. Click the SAVE button

 

 

 

How to archive a department

When a department is archived, users added to that department and requests assigned to that department will be unaffected:

• Users assigned to an archived department: If you do not want users to be shown as assigned to an archived department you must remove the users from the department before archiving it. For information about how to change the users assigned to a department click here.
• Requests assigned to an archived department: Requests can be assigned to different departments after their currently assigned department is archived. For information about how to assign a request to a department click here.

 

Steps for archiving a department

1. Sign in to your account
2. Click the ADMIN link in the header
3. Click the Departments link in the sub-header
4. Click the archive icon () next to the department you want to archive
5. Click OK